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Jason Marsden

Jason Marsden is an actor, born 1975.

Marsden started on camera as a kid, working through the late-1980s and early-1990s American sitcom circuit: Full House, Step by Step, Boy Meets World, plus the odd film like White Squall. Then he moved into a voice booth and has essentially never left, becoming one of the most-employed voices in Western animation.

His instrument is a slightly cracked adolescent tenor that has stayed usable for thirty years, which is the industry's rarest asset. It made him Max Goof from A Goofy Movie in 1995 onwards, through An Extremely Goofy Movie and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas, and it made him the default best friend: Chester McBadbat in The Fairly OddParents, Richie Foley in Static Shock, Kid Flash in Young Justice, Snapper Carr in Justice League. He voiced Thackery Binx in Hocus Pocus, Kovu in The Lion King II and later The Lion Guard, Haku in the English dub of Spirited Away, and Nermal across the Garfield series.

The useful thing about him is that the same voice turns sinister with almost no adjustment. Chase Young in Xiaolin Showdown is silky and patient and completely unlike the sidekicks, and it is the performance that proves the range. Add the Tak video game trilogy and a long list of DC animated work, and you have a career measured in volume rather than in a handful of famous titles.

Movies (31)

TV (47)

Where to start with Jason Marsden

Open with A Goofy Movie, because Max is the role he has held longest and the film is a much better piece of storytelling about fathers and sons than a Goofy feature needed to be.

For the range, go to Xiaolin Showdown and listen to Chase Young, then to Static Shock, where Richie is the motormouth best friend done properly. Young Justice gives him Kid Flash across a series with real continuity.

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride is the Disney sequel that people underrate, and Hocus Pocus is the one where you have heard him without knowing it, since he voices the cat. The Garfield Show is for completists and small children, in that order.

The Disney work

Max Goof is the role, and thirty years in one part is unusual anywhere. A Goofy Movie was dismissed on release and has been thoroughly reclaimed since, largely by people who happened to be the right age in 1995.

The superhero animation

A long run in the DC animated shows. Static Shock gave him Richie, a sidekick who is also the smartest person in the room, and Young Justice is the best made of them by a clear margin.

The live-action child roles

The child-actor years, when he was on three network sitcoms at once. White Squall is the outlier, a Ridley Scott film where he is one of a crew of teenagers, and Hocus Pocus is the one that plays every October.

Genres Jason Marsden works in